* Thanks to a Twitter-response, I was reminded about my item from July 2010, after Lin signed with the GSWs, and I asked Lin who he might model his game after. His answer: Goran Dragic, in the pick-and-roll. Man, I’d totally forgotten that.

-My goodness, Jeremy Lin can run the pick-and-roll. Can really, really, REALLY run it.

That’s something nobody discovered last season when Lin was on the Warriors, mostly because last season’s Warriors didn’t often try to run anything resembling the NBA”s most reliable play.

Tonight, due to several interesting circumstances, and right before the Knicks had to decide whether to guarantee his contract for the rest of the season, Lin got the first start of his NBA career.

I made sure to DVR it. Just went through it. Whew!

Lin ran pick-and-roll all night, ran it incredibly well, barreled to the rim, played good defense, and slammed the pedal down in one of the more memorable performances of the season so far.

He scored 28 points (on 10 for 17 shooting), had 8 assists (it seemed like a lot more, maybe because his “bigs” kept blowing lay-ups) and 2 steals in 45 amazing minutes during the Knicks’ 99-88 victory over Utah at MSG.

In the second quarter, he just destroyed Utah veteran Earl Watson–attacking him so aggressively and successfully that you could’ve imagined that was the ghost of Kevin Johnson out there.

But it was Lin. Out of Harvard. Chinese-American. What a story, no matter how else this develops.

Baron Davis is supposedly the Knicks’ coming savior at point guard. For a couple nights, it has been Lin, instead.

We’ll see how this plays out. No, I never expected this out of Lin.

But I do believe that anybody who can run the pick-and-roll like that in a Mike D’Antoni offense (think: Steve Nash) with the floor spread out… is going to do fine, at the very least as a productive, energy back-up PG.

And Lin can run the pick-and-roll.

Yes, he was a plus-12 in the plus-minus, if you need to know. He made the Garden go nuts, of course.

That was with Amare Stoudemire in Florida to be with his family after the death of his brother, and with Carmelo Anthony leaving the game for good halfway through the first quarter with a groin injury.

The Knicks still won… going away. Utah looked awful, no doubt–the Jazz big men clearly have no idea how to rotate on the pick-and-roll.

But Lin and Jared Jeffries, Tyson Chandler, Steve Novak, Iman Shumpert and the rest have to be given full credit for making the Jazz look so bad.

The only negative: Lin committed 8 turnovers, all the second half, which mainly is attributable to his fatigue and the Jazz guards swiping at him furiously in the later stages.

Lin is hugely right-hand dominant–that was obvious from last season.

So watch that as the nights go on in his NBA career. Teams will play the pick-and-roll/dribble-right/drive/over-the-shoulder-pass, and Lin and the Knicks will have to adjust to it.

But many great players have flourished for years dribbling mostly with only one hand, and Allen Iverson and Latrell Sprewell are names that come to mind. (Monta Ellis, too.)

Tonight’s performance follows Lin’s outing off the bench two nights ago, when he
lifted the Knicks over New Jersey (and Deron Williams), playing 36 minutes and scoring 25 points, with 7 assists, 5 rebounds, 2 steals (and only 1 turnover).

Lin was +13 in that game.

Great stuff. I don’t know how long it’ll continue, but just those two games, by themselves… were great.

—OK, let’s get to the Warriors part of this.

Lin was without doubt circled and signed at the insistence of Joe Lacob–not yet officially owner, but exerting influence–after Lin was undrafted out of Harvard in 2010.

Lin had played some ball with Lacob’s son, Kirk, in Palo Alto, and, yes, Kirk is now a major player in the Warriors front office.

So the GSWs out-bid Dallas–who had Lin on its summer-league team–to land the Palo Alto High/Harvard star.

Not shockingly, Lin didn’t get much action as a rookie–in a back court already set with Stephen Curry and Monta Ellis, and with then-coach Keith Smart set to play Acie Law, among others, there was no room for Lin.

I certainly didn’t think Lin was a guy who deserved much time, either.

He can play D, but has an awkward jump shot, problems dribbling left, and doesn’t have a great offensive repertoire–at least, not if there’s no pick-and-roll being run.

And for some reason, Smart didn’t run much pick-and-roll last season. David Lee is a pick-and-roll big man, that’s what he is–which Lee did all the time in New York (for D’Antoni!).

Still, hardly any pick-and-roll for the Warriors last season. (Mark Jackson is running a lot of pick-and-roll now. It might be the GSW’s best set–put Ellis or Curry at the top, run Lee over to set a screen, see how the defense reacts.)

When Smart was dismissed and Jackson was hired, I don’t think Jackson or the incoming front office thought much of Lin, and again, that didn’t seem like a wrong conclusion.

The Warriors’ front office drafted Charles Jenkins in the second round–a more imposing all-around player–and suddenly, there was not much room on the roster for two project young back-up PGs. Only one of whom could shoot pull-up jumpers. (Not Lin.)

–Nobody knew he could play pick-and-roll like this, I repeat.

Lin was brought to camp, but was taken off the floor during the first practice and told he’d been waived.

Why cut him then? Because the Warriors were trying to get as far under the cap as possible to make the biggest offer sheet they could to restricted free agent DeAndre Jordan.

Even Lin’s extra couple hundred thousand (he had a partial-guarantee of about $50,000 this season, but the non-guaranteed part was still counting against the GSW cap) was eating into what they wanted to offer.

The Warriors couldn’t stash him in the D-League because any existing NBA contract counts fully for salary-cap purposes. If they wanted more space, the Warriors had to cut Lin and eat the guaranteed money, too.

The Warriors decided Jenkins was going to make the team; there was no need for a training camp roster battle with Lin, and they needed the Lin cap-space, however little it was.

Of course, you know what happened: The Clippers matched the Jordan offer, the Warriors got nothing out of it, Lin was picked up by Houston, who released him a few weeks later, and then he was picked up by the Knicks.

Now, for a little while at least, Lin is King of New York City.

Just because the Knicks ran pick-and-roll, and nobody knew Lin could do that when he was with the Warriors, because the Warriors didn’t run pick-and-roll last season.

That’s the way that works.

–I guess I have to remind everybody that the Warriors used their one-time amnesty provision on Charlie Bell’s $4.1M contract this summer in order to get more space for Jordan’s offer…

But Bell’s contract was expiring, anyway. So by not getting Jordan, the Warriors used their amnesty for nothing.

The Warriors could’ve gotten substantially under the cap–immediately and into the future if they didn’t get Jordan–if they’d used their amnesty provision on Andris Biedrins or Lee… but they declined to do so.

Result: They wasted the amnesty, still have too many bloated long-term deals, and don’t have Lin, anymore.